Psalm 103:2

The psalm is headed “A Psalm of David”, and it begins with a king giving orders to himself. “Bless the LORD, O my soul” is a command, and David speaks it to his own inner life as he might speak to another person. The word for soul, nephesh, means the whole living person: life, desires, emotions and personality together. When David tells his nephesh to bless the LORD, he is summoning all of himself. The second line says the same thing more fully: “all that is within me”. The Hebrew qereb means the inward parts, the midst of a person, so the call reaches his thoughts, affections, intentions and spirit. Hebrew poetry often says a thing twice in different words, and here the second line makes the call stronger and wider.

Because it is a command, it shows that worship is something we choose. Praise can rise up on its own in a moment of joy, and it can also be called up on purpose when the soul is sluggish, distracted or discouraged. David decides to praise and tells his feelings to follow. Another psalm does the same when the writer asks, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” and answers, “hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him” (Psalm 42:5).

“All that is within me” echoes the great commandment, to love the LORD “with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deuteronomy 6:5), which Jesus repeats as the first commandment of all (Mark 12:30). God asks for the whole person in love, and David offers the whole person in praise. Israel worshipped together at the tabernacle and later at the temple, and this psalm shows a single man stirring himself to worship from the depths of his own being, wherever he is.

Verse 2 repeats the opening command and adds a reason to it: “forget not all his benefits”. The word gᵉmûwl can mean a recompense or reward, or simply the way one person has dealt with another. Here it means God’s dealings with David, acts of kindness, provision and deliverance that God gave freely and David never earned. “All”, kol, takes in every one of them. Praise and memory belong together in this verse. David blesses God as he remembers, and each thing he remembers gives him more to bless God for.

The warning against forgetting runs all through Israel’s law. Moses told the people, “Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God” (Deuteronomy 8:11), and “beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 6:12). Israel’s faith rested on remembering the deliverance from Egypt, the provision in the wilderness and the promises God had made. When God’s people forget, they grow ungrateful and grumble, lose their trust when trials come, and drift away from him toward idols. Remembering keeps them thankful and faithful. The same call rings out in Chronicles: “Remember his marvellous works that he hath done” (1 Chronicles 16:12). Paul joins prayer to thanksgiving in the same spirit when he tells believers to make their requests known to God “with thanksgiving” (Philippians 4:6).

So David counts the benefits in order to remember them. In the next three verses he names forgiveness, healing, redemption, a crown of love and mercy, and good things that renew his strength (Psalm 103:3–5). The psalm then goes on to more. The LORD executes righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed (Psalm 103:6), and he is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy” (Psalm 103:8). The verses that follow speak of his compassion and his everlasting faithfulness to those who fear him (Psalm 103:6–18), and the psalm ends by calling the angels and all his works to bless the LORD (Psalm 103:20–22). It moves from one man’s soul to the whole creation, and it begins with one man remembering.

Forgiveness comes first in the list because sin is a person’s deepest trouble. It separates us from a holy God and leads to death, so being reconciled to him is the need beneath every other. The verb çâlach means to forgive, pardon or spare, and here God is the one who does it. He takes away the guilt of the offence and restores the broken relationship. A person who forgives can still carry resentment, while God’s pardon wipes the offence away completely. This is an act of his covenant faithfulness, his steadfast love toward a people who have rebelled against him.

The word for iniquity, ʻâvôn, means perversity, moral evil, a turning aside from God’s right path. It covers the sinful act, the twisted heart that produces it, and the guilt and punishment that follow from it. David says “all thine iniquities”, the whole sum of a person’s failings, so every sin, however grievous and however many, is within reach of God’s pardon. Isaiah gives the same wide invitation: “let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:7).

David knew both personal sin and bodily affliction well, and he begins his list with the gift he needed most.

The second benefit is healing. The verb râphâʼ means to cure or to make whole, and Strong’s gives its root sense as “to mend (by stitching)”. It is used mostly of the body, and it also reaches to the restoring of a person’s spirit or of a whole nation. The form here pictures God as one who goes on healing, always at work. The word for diseases, tachălûwʼ, is a general term for sickness and affliction of every kind. “All thy diseases” matches “all thine iniquities”, so God’s power over sickness is as complete as his pardon of sin.

God revealed himself to Israel in these terms: “I am the LORD that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). Israel understood that sin and suffering were often connected, as the blessings and curses of the covenant show (Deuteronomy 28), though Scripture stops short of tying every illness to a particular sin. Healing was also a sign of God’s favour and his presence among his people.

Forgiveness and healing stand side by side because our brokenness is both spiritual and physical, and God’s saving work reaches both. Isaiah joins them in a promise for God’s people: “the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity” (Isaiah 33:24). James joins them in the life of the church, where the prayer of faith saves the sick and their sins are forgiven (James 5:15–16). Jesus joined them in a single act when he forgave a paralysed man and then made him walk, “that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” (Matthew 9:6, and the whole account in Matthew 9:2–6). Well-being begins with being reconciled to God, and other restoration often flows from it.

The verb gâʼal means to redeem, rescue or deliver, and above all to act as a kinsman-redeemer. In Israel the go’el was the close relative who protected the family’s interests. He bought back land that had been sold, avenged a relative’s blood and freed a relative who had fallen into slavery. When God redeems, he steps in personally, as his people’s nearest kin, to set them free. He promised Israel in Egypt, “I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments” (Exodus 6:6), and that deliverance from bondage became Israel’s great picture of redemption.

What God redeems is “thy life”, chay, the whole person in body and spirit. What he redeems it from is shachath, a word that literally means a pit or ditch and is often used of the grave, decay and corruption. The KJV’s “destruction” takes in every ruin that threatens a life: danger, severe illness, spiritual decay, and finally death and the punishment of sin. David had faced grave peril many times and been delivered, and he praises the LORD as the one who rules over life and death.

Having lifted a life out of the pit, God sets a crown on its head. A crown stood for honour, authority and favour, worn by a king or given to someone greatly loved. Here the crown is made of God’s own love and mercy. He raises the one he rescued to a place of honour, as though he were royalty, and so shows how much he values his people.

The word for lovingkindness, cheçed, is one of the richest in the Old Testament. It means steadfast love, covenant loyalty, mercy and unfailing grace. It is love that acts and keeps its promises, and it lies at the heart of God’s character and of his covenant with Israel. Scripture calls him “longsuffering, and of great mercy” (Numbers 14:18). “Tender mercies”, rachamim, means deep compassion, a pity often likened to a mother’s tenderness for her child.

Both words mark God’s faithfulness to his covenant, and they meet again in Lamentations: “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23). Paul is sure that this love holds fast through death and life and everything else in all creation (Romans 8:38–39). To be crowned with it is to be surrounded, honoured and made secure by the love of God.

The verb sâbaʻ means to be filled, to have enough and more, with plenty that leaves want and hunger behind. The good things, ṭôwb, are everything that does a person good, from food for the body to comfort for the heart and nourishment for the spirit. God gives generously and fills our deepest needs and longings, and Paul says the same of him: “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

The word the KJV renders “mouth” is an unusual one. ʻădîy ordinarily means finery or ornament, and Strong’s also gives “outfit” and “headstall”. Read as “mouth”, it stands for a person’s appetite and desires, the whole person as the one who receives God’s gifts. Its usual sense adds another shade, that God’s good gifts adorn and complete the one who receives them.

The result of God’s satisfying gifts is that “thy youth is renewed”. The word nâʻûwr means youth, the time of life marked by vigour, freshness and strength. châdash means to be new, and in its causative sense to rebuild or repair, so that what has grown old or worn becomes fresh again. God does this work himself.

The nesher is the eagle, or another large bird of prey, known in ancient times for its majesty, strength, long life and high flight. The eagle sheds its worn feathers and grows strong new ones, and those who watched it took this molting as the bird regaining its youthful vigour, keen sight and powerful flight. David uses that sight to show how fully God restores a person.

The youth renewed here is vitality more than years. God gives fresh strength of spirit, heart and mind as well as body, at whatever age he finds us, so that we can live with renewed purpose. Isaiah makes the same promise with the same bird: “they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31). The renewal comes from his grace, from mercies that are new every morning.

Every benefit David counts reaches its fullest form in Jesus Christ. The holy name we bless is made known in him: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). God has given him “a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Philippians 2:9–11), so blessing the LORD’s holy name now includes worshipping the Son. Through him we “offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name” (Hebrews 13:15), and the Holy Spirit enables all that is within us to bless God.

The benefits David counted are ours in Christ as spiritual blessings, “every spiritual blessing in heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3, set out in full in Ephesians 1:3–14). Forgiveness of all iniquity is secured by “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). In him “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7), for God has delivered us from the power of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son (Colossians 1:13–14).

Healing is in him as well. Jesus forgave and healed in the same ministry (Matthew 9:1–8), and Isaiah’s word “with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5) is taken up by Peter about the cross (1 Peter 2:24). Some are healed in body now, and the full healing is freedom from the curse of sin and death, completed in the resurrection body and a new creation without suffering (Revelation 21:4).

Christ is also the true kinsman-redeemer. Being fully God and fully man, he became one of us in order to buy us back from sin and death. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13), and God shows his love in that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He took the destruction we deserved, and his resurrection raises us to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4) and gives everlasting life to all who believe (John 3:16).

The crown of lovingkindness and tender mercies is seen in his life. When he saw the multitudes, “he was moved with compassion on them” (Matthew 9:36), and he healed the sick, fed the hungry, taught the lost and welcomed outcasts. Those who belong to him are adopted into God’s family and wait for “a crown of righteousness” (2 Timothy 4:8) and “a crown of glory that fadeth not away” (1 Peter 5:4).

And Christ is the good thing that satisfies. He is the bread of life, who promises that whoever comes to him “shall never hunger” (John 6:35), and the giver of the water that springs up into everlasting life (John 4:14). In him a person becomes “a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Spirit who raised Jesus gives life to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11) and transforms us by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). His resurrection guarantees ours, and the renewal of the eagle’s youth looks ahead to the day when he says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

David’s way of praise is open to every believer. When your heart is slow to worship, you can speak to it as he did and call it to bless the LORD. Then you can give it reasons, counting what God has done: the sins he has forgiven, the times he has healed and kept you, the mercy that has met you morning by morning and the good things he has given you. Memory feeds praise, and praise brings more to mind.

The order of the list is worth keeping too. David begins with forgiveness, and so can we, because the God who pardons all our iniquities has met our deepest need in Christ. You can bring him your sins to confess and your sicknesses to pray over, and trust him to answer in his wisdom and his time. When you are weary, the strength he renews is his gift to those who wait on him, so that your soul can rise again and bless his holy name.